Robert starts to search around, looking for something, to no avail. He grumbles. Lisa sees the remote control peeking out from under the rocker’s seat cushion. She hands it to Robert, who presses down on the big red button, the only one whose purpose he can still remember. There’s a morning show on the TV. Today, they’re blind-tasting different balsamic vinegars.
Lisa kisses her father on the forehead, presses her head against his for a long time and goes out of the room.
SLOUCHED IN HER ERGONOMIC CHAIR, Jay remains aloof from the celebration. It seems as if the entire floor has agreed to meet up in the Enclave. There’s Laura and Mahesh, of course, and Sergeant Gamache, who’s on the phone, and three colleagues from Narcotics who came to see what was going on, and Micheline Saint-Laurent, and an officer from Commercial Crime. Even the person in charge of the recycling bins is loitering in a corner, casting an occasional glance back over his shoulder. People come and go and talk cheerfully.
Amid the hubbub, Jay catches the key bits of information: Papa Zulu was off-loaded in Singapore eight days ago with a transshipment code for Jakarta. Ever the instructor, Laura explains that Singapore is the world’s biggest transshipment port, with 15 percent of all the containers on the globe transiting there—that is, twenty thousand containers a day filled with latex gloves and plastic beads, handbags, mica powder, canned beef, ink, USB connectors, wrapping paper, galvanized sheet metal, Christmas lights and potassium silicate. What’s more, the port is equipped with seven thousand hookups for reefers, which makes sense considering there are three billion digestive systems within a radius of four thousand kilometres.
In a word, it’s the ideal location for disappearing from view.
Right now, everyone is speculating about whether Papa Zulu was really sent to Jakarta (near-zero probability) or kept on standby in the port of Singapore (average probability), cleared through customs (negligible probability) or re-dispatched to an as-yet-unspecified destination (high probability).
Laura has already brought up on her screen the map of all the intermodal ports within a radius of 2,500 nautical miles. Standing at the whiteboard, Mahesh scribbles equations to compare the surface area (S) and the density (d) of Papa Zulu’s potential dispersion (Pz) in relation to the number of ports of call (Np) through time (T). In sum: a large number of ports of call means slower forward progress but a more complicated investigation.
Jay, meanwhile, is thinking back to the little ten-year-old girl she once was, standing on a pier wearing a Nordiques hockey toque. Laura suddenly notices her.
“Are you okay? You’re white.”
“I’m white?”
“As a sheet. Did you have anything to eat this morning?”
“Um…yes.”
“You need a vacation.”
Jay nods, slowly at first, then more and more vigorously. A vacation? All things considered, that is an excellent idea.
LISA IS READING WHEN THE lights abruptly go out and the ventilation stops. Everything goes dark and silent, except for the battery-powered devices, whose indicator lights are visible here and there. Lisa can hear nothing now but the distant sound of machinery intermingled with that of her pulse throbbing in her eardrums.
A metallic jolt reverberates through the container, which rises and sways a little. The interior compartment creaks but does not crack; as planned, the various modules yield to each other. Another jolt, and then a vibration. The container is in motion. Lisa could turn on the GPS screen and track its path, but she does nothing of the sort. All is quiet in the darkness, and she doesn’t feel like budging.
The container moves for a while, turns left, then left again, and comes to a stop. There’s another metallic jolt: the gantry crane grasps the corners of the container and Lisa suddenly feels herself being lifted several storeys and set down on a ship. Banging and vibrations; the hooks are released and everything goes silent again.
After a minute or two, there are new noises: a container lands on the port side of PZIU 127 002 7, then another on top, and still another nearby, like so many pieces in the hands of a giant. Lisa hears the metallic banging of the securing operation, the lugs being locked, the hoist slings being attached to the corners of the box. Then more jolts, farther and farther away, not so much noise as waves. This container’s soundproofing is surprisingly effective.
Then, all at once, the interior comes to life again. The lights come on, the ventilation starts up and the freezer in the pantry can be heard purring.
Lisa leaps to her feet and sits down at the chart table. She keeps calling it that even though it’s not strictly speaking a chart table. Actually, there aren’t any geographical maps on board; such maps are designed for navigating in a real territory, and Lisa is about to enter a whole other kind of space, at the intersection of management and economics.
She wakes the computer with the tip of her index finger. Eight windows appear on the screen and the action is as hectic as in a NASA command centre. In the foreground is the loading layout of the ship in real time, as seen by the port personnel. The containers are being stacked one on top of the other, little yellow tiles nicely assembled in rows, each in its own slot. The OOCL Belgium is a fairly average Panamax, with a capacity of fourteen hundred containers. Lisa’s was placed aft, with the other reefers.
Bay 26, Row 01, Tier 82: this will be her address for the next five days.
Lisa relaxes somewhat. Éric gave her a lengthy presentation on the dangers associated with being positioned in an outside cell. If the ship starts to list or is struck by giant waves, the lateral containers are the first to go overboard, something that occurs more often than one might think. Furthermore, all the dangerous or flammable products are positioned on the periphery. Better to be in the middle, with the teddy bears and the baking soda.
She pictures the high wall of containers rising toward the stern of the ship. If the partitions weren’t so well soundproofed, she would be able to hear dozens of air conditioners humming like a gigantic beehive. Lisa jumps onto the bunk and places her nose near the ventilation grille. The air carries a faint odour of grease. Of course ships smell of grease—what was Lisa expecting? From the bottom of the hold to the tops of the deck winches, this industry is steeped in grease, oil and bunker fuel. With a little luck, as soon as they reach the channel, the prevailing wind will hit the wall of containers and the smell of the river will take over.
She sits back down in front of the computer and reviews the list of things to do before they weigh anchor. She still has to remove the traces she left in the databases, access the ship’s routers to be able to use the network once out to sea (He2 is already on it) and listen to the VHF radio to find out when the loading will be completed. Then she can begin to tackle the medium-term tasks: plan the transfer at Caucedo, examine the departure schedule for Panama, fill out and send the paperwork to the port authorities, shipping companies and customs. Voyage to the Centre of the Bureaucracy.
Right now, everything is fine. She has power and passwords, and she’ll soon be holding a beer in her hand. Tonight’s menu: rice noodles with shrimp, mango salad and fresh vanilla tapioca pudding.
She really can’t see what could go wrong.
“WHICH COMPANY?” THE CAB DRIVER ASKS.
Jay shrugs; she bought her ticket so quickly that she’s forgotten which airline she’ll be flying on. She points to the first sign that comes up. Lufthansa. That will do.
The car slips into a vacant spot. Jay holds out two twenty-dollar bills—keep the change—and springs into the open air. A snowflake splatters onto her nose. Towing her bag, she slaloms between the baggage carts, steps through the doors and finds herself back at square one: the concourse of Trudeau airport. Around her, people are moving in every direction, each of them following their own straight line.
Jay pokes around in her pocket, looking for her transaction statement, and steps up to a check-in kiosk. Adult passenger. Window seat. No checked baggage. No, she’s not carrying any weapons, fireworks, solvents
or compressed gas.
The machine spits out her boarding pass, and Jay heads toward pre-board screening. She overtakes a group of students on a language immersion trip, rushes into the screening area and instinctively looks around for the paranoid agent who inspects books by Jules Verne with a scalpel. Nowhere in sight.
Jay doesn’t recognize anyone, no one recognizes her, and her passport doesn’t set off any alarms. Even if an agent did decide to question her, he would find nothing suspicious about her taking an airplane. Unlike her previous flight, this time she is simply on vacation for health reasons. She claimed to be suffering from restless nights, poor appetite, and a variety of obsessions and compulsions—which, in a way, is the absolute truth. She ended up receiving a joint letter of authorization from the RCMP, the Parole Board and her immediate supervisor, who could easily get by without Jay while she took ten, twelve or even, if she liked, fifteen days off for some R and R in Spain—off you go.
But no one asks her for an explanation, and the letter stays tucked away in her pocket.
It does feel strange to be a normal person. This morning, standing in front of her closet with one hand on the shoulder of her pantsuit, she hesitated. Just as she was going to lift it out, she changed her mind. The pantsuit was not just a disguise; it was a suit of armour, and merely putting it on would amount to an admission of weakness. On second thought, a pair of jeans and an old T-shirt would do just fine. Jay would gladly have pulled on her old Nordiques toque if it hadn’t got lost in the shuffle decades ago. Maybe it was still mouldering away at the bottom of a drawer in her father’s house on the Lower North Shore.
Jay removes her shoes and belt, her jacket and watch, and empties her pockets. She places her Eee in a grey bin. Then she lines up in her stocking feet and watches the conveyor carry off her black suitcase, with the label of the Royaume de la Valise still attached. In front of her, an overweight businessman has to choose between an EHF scan and a frisk. He opts for the scan. You have to keep up with the times.
The agent finally turns toward Jay and motions for her to advance. She steps through the metal detector—no beeps—and shows her boarding pass. All clear, thank you, have a good day. Jay collects her belongings from the conveyor, puts her things back on and charges into the international zone. The worst is over. Directly ahead of her, the air is fragrant with fries and freedom.
There are still twenty minutes left before boarding, and Jay stops in a bookshop to buy a bottle of water. Standing in front of the science fiction section, she skims a few back covers. Everything looks insipid to her. She thinks about Élisabeth Routier-Savoie, who at this very moment is sailing in international waters on the far side of the planet, shut inside her container. Did she take along some reading material to while away the hours of rolling and pitching?
Jay leaves the bookshop with her bottle of water and a novel she won’t read.
Gate 53. The travellers are crammed into every corner, in every possible position. Jay lays claim to part of a seat between a hockey equipment bag and an eighty-year-old Sikh man. In front of them, a built-in screen is showing offbeat news items. A rhinoceros adopts a brood of ducklings. A woman has let her toenails grow for fifteen years. An adventurer crosses the Americas all the way to Tierra del Fuego on a unicycle. Station identification, barrage of commercials, followed by an infotainment offering on the financial crisis in Abu Dhabi. Thousands of cars are gathering dust near the Dubai airport, left there by hordes of ruined Brits and Emiratis, who have fled to evade imprisonment for default. It appears that speculative culture and sharia law are hard to reconcile. The camera pans over Ferraris, Jaguars and Porsches abandoned on the side of the road or in underground parking lots, with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. The hoods are covered with a yellowish powder, in which people have drawn phalluses and written insults in Arabic.
Jay feels a fierce need to be done with geography.
JAY AND HER COMPUTER ARE ASLEEP.
The night was spent hopping from one train to the next, first in Hamburg, then Lübeck—where there was a slight delay after the train had flattened a Fiat 500 at a level crossing—then Puttgarden, and finally in Rødbyhavn, where Jay ended up aboard the R4208, an exasperatingly slow Regionalzug. She would have saved precious hours by taking the plane from Brussels, but she chose to be discreet. She must follow the script.
After two hours of fighting off sleep, she finally succumbed with the Eee balanced on her lap and her hands on the keyboard. In front of her, the screen is a deep, deep black. She wakes up when the computer is about to slip off her lap, catching it just in time. To her right, the sun is exploding on the horizon, the light almost unbearable.
Squinting, Jay tries to understand the landscape streaming past the window. The train is apparently crossing a kind of sea arm on a threadlike bridge. The scene is straight out of an IKEA commercial.
It’s been thirty hours now since she left Montreal, and if her calculations are correct, taking into account the time zone difference, in ten minutes she will officially turn forty.
She stretches her neck and sweeps her eyes around the train. Half the seats are unoccupied. Across the aisle, a couple is sleeping. The woman’s head rests on the man’s thigh; there’s a telephone in his hand. Lying on the tray in front of them is a tourist brochure. A Coke can rolls from port to starboard in the curves. The air smells of vinegar and sweat. What a pathetic place to celebrate a new decade.
Forty. The last months have been so busy that Jay didn’t even have time to go through the conventional moods: bitterness, anxiety, regrets. The fact is, she feels as though she’s grown younger since November. Her senses are on the alert, and she has recovered her old skills.
Her Eee signals that a message has been received. Jay activates the screen with her forefinger. E-mail from Laura, who wishes her a happy birthday and a good time vacationing in Andalusia—population eight million, capital Seville, short-term weather forecast fabulous—and, while she’s at it, brings Jay up to date on the latest news: a container called Papa Zulu is thought to have left the port of Singapore twelve days ago bound for Colombo. Send us a postcard. Warmly, LW.
Jay scratches the tip of her nose. Colombo? Called up to assist, Google presents a map of Sri Lanka. Utterly predictable. Élisabeth continued her voyage westward, crossed the Strait of Malacca and then the Gulf of Bengal. She has already covered three thousand kilometres since leaving Singapore, and Lord knows how many since Colombo. She is speeding up—unlike this train, which seems about to slow down again.
The Coke can rolls to her feet. Jay slips the Eee into her bag and goes hunting for some strong coffee, assuming such a substance can be found aboard.
After forty-five minutes replete with fields and villages and cows, the train pulls into the little station in Roskilde. The environs have a suburban look about them. Around Jay, the passengers stir and stand up, collect their luggage. The train slowly pulls out. The tracks can be heard agonizing under the car’s wheels; mobile phones ring here and there.
At last, they announce København H.
Standing near the door, Jay fidgets impatiently, as though wanting to alight while the train is still moving. As soon as it enters the station, she hops down onto the platform and merges with the throng. It’s rush hour; tourists commingle with suburban workers. The ideal moment to go undetected. A clock shows 6:39 a.m., still too early to go knocking on people’s doors, but first Jay needs to eat, to drink some coffee—the brew served on board the train was an affront to humanity—and get her bearings in the city.
She goes up the escalator and looks around. She notices the scent of coffee and pastries (to the right) and a sign with a suitcase (to the left). Bagagebokse, the sign says. Jay’s vocabulary widens by the minute in this country.
At the entrance to the lockers hangs a notice with the rates and opening hours. The maximum storage time is seventy-two hours. Jay will need far less time than that. She shoves her suitcase to the back of the first available locke
r, keeping only her computer case, her passport and her wallet, which she now looks through. Tucked between two twenty-euro notes is a precious little scrap of a UPS envelope bearing the address of Éric Le Blanc, Stjernegade 3030.
She shuts the locker, pockets the key and goes off to track down that coffee.
ON THE LIVING ROOM WALL hangs a huge coloured map of the world, a hybrid Bonne/Lambert projection, where the continents fan out like banana leaves.
A line drawn with a red marker starts in Montreal, follows the St. Lawrence, exits the Gulf and descends to Caucedo, moves on to Panama, climbs up the West Coast toward Alaska and disappears at the upper left margin, among the dragons and sea spray, reappears at the other end of the map, brushes by the Japanese archipelago, lands in Shenzhen, cuts across toward Singapore, ricochets toward Sri Lanka, and ends in the Indian Ocean off the coast of India.
Standing in front of the map, Lærke Høj-Le Blanc lets her pinky slide along the line.
The little girl doesn’t have school today, and since her mother had an important meeting scheduled, she has come to spend the day with Éric. Other options were available—day camp, music or drama school, private rock-climbing lessons, a chartered hot-air balloon ride—but Lærke would rather stay with her big brother, who doesn’t object.
It should be noted that she is quite good at keeping herself busy. She draws sea serpents, builds Lego cities, turns the library upside down, empties the fridge, and, more often than not, plants herself in front of the enormous picture windows, armed with a giant pair of binoculars, to watch the comings and goings at the port. Nothing fascinates her more than the repetitive ballet of gantry cranes, trucks, ships and containers. There’s definitely a virus going around in this family.
Six Degrees of Freedom Page 22
